Double-Dog Dare You to Chase Your Dreams

How are you? Well, happy Wednesday. Come on in here. We're going to do our thing. We're talking about dreams today. Well, what happened many, many years ago at a mentor of mine, he double-dog dared me to follow my dreams.

He did. Double-dog dare me. Who knows? Maybe I'll do it to you today. I don't know. It is the Daily Boost from MotivationToMove.com. Oh, come on, Scott.

We don't follow our dreams. Are you one of those guys? Follow your dreams. Okay, here's the thing. Come real close, okay? My name is Scott Smith. Good to have it.

I know. I know sometimes it's that. Don't want to do it. Follow my dreams. Come on, man. Get real. Every single person I know, it doesn't matter how young they are or how old they are.

There's something going on inside your head that you have an idea that you'd like to do. It's kind of a dream, right? Then we turn it into goals. We get it done.

So, yeah, it's a little like, whoa. But come on, man. If you could, you'd follow it, wouldn't you? So a long time ago, I was sitting across the table from a mentor of mine.

He's a grown man, man. Grown man, man. Had done well. I mean, had the life, had everything. A very patient kind of guy. Kind of the calm voice. Kind of like me.

You know, really calm. It makes you assume he's very wise and whatever he says was going to be wise. I was leaning in because I pay attention to my mentors. I still do to this day.

And by the way, some of my mentors are younger than I am. I have no trouble with that. If you're wise, I'm going to suck that wisdom right out of you. Got my coffee, ready to go, going to get my gift, right?

So this dude looks at me and he says, I swear to you, no warning. He looks at me and says, Scott, I double dog dare you. I'm taking away this stuff. I was in my 50s at the time.

My mentor is older than me. We're two grown adults sitting at the kitchen table. And the word he chose out of every single word available in the English language to this man with a really big vocabulary was, double dog dare you? What am I in Georgia right now?

I'm in Florida. I'm close to it, right? I almost choked on my coffee, but I know better because I like my coffee. I want to drink it. He said, I double dog dare you.

Either go down and follow your dreams, full speed, all in, or, and you're just going to lean back. You've seen it before, that position where they get ready to drop the hammer on you.

You agree right now, sitting at this table, that you give them up. Forever. And you'll never speak about them again, ever. For the rest of your life, ever.

I just sat there. What do you say? I mean, I can say anything. I can respond to anything that anybody says to me. And I didn't say a word. I sat there like a guy handed a contract, I think.

It's like the devil said, here, let's make a deal, right? Here's the pen, here's the paper, sign the thing, right? I felt like that for a second. I was like, what, really?

Either go do it, double-dog guarantee to do it, or give up entirely? I mean, the first option sounded so much harder. It did. I'm sitting there and my brain is like doing the math, right?

The math is like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Option B, shut up. Don't talk about it. Never have to talk about it again. Don't write the book that I keep saying I'm going to write.

Don't have to mention the business I don't want to start again. Never have to sit at like Thanksgiving with all my relatives, their eyes glazing over when I'm like, hey, let me tell you about my podcast. What happened on the podcast? I'm a podcaster.

It's happened. Four or five seconds, I mean, I was sitting there and just thinking. I mean, maybe a little bit embarrassed by this. And I realized something.

My friend, Louis Gates, he's a spiritual counselor of mine. I was shopping. Louis says, you've been shopping. You're just browsing. You're like browsing the aisle, aren't you?

And he said that. I said, what do you mean browsing, man? He's another mentor and a friend too. You know, actually kind of, you know, kind of looking around, checking out the cart of life that's in front of me, seeing what I'm feeling with.

And I caught myself because I said, well, I guess he kind of caught me. He got me with that dare, man. Because if you think about this, if you're sitting there, I'm going to sign a piece of paper that's going to make me choose one way or the other. I mean, that's kind of your answer.

You don't have a dream problem. You have a me problem. And you've been using someday, as they say, as a parking spot. That's where I was that day. So I looked at him.

And I say what every brave person like me would say in the moment. I said, okay, I'll take door number one. Using my language, I said, I'll face it. I'll face my passion.

Full speed, all in, let's go. And he kind of smiled, but then I had a problem. Because it's really different to say it, right? I mean, maybe you're thinking that today.

Yeah, sure, man. I'm all in. Listen, I deal with people all the time. I coach people a lot, all week long. And what happens is you kind of fall face first into it.

You kind of crumble in your own dreams, like a big old pile of dreams there on the floor, right? Whomp, done. Face down. Mouthful of dreams that you've had eight years ago.

Didn't pan out, did they? Spitting them out. I'm going to start a food truck. I'm going to lose weight. Here's a screenplay. I started in 1998. What happens kind of hit me pretty hard, right?

Fix your passion. I talk about this all the time. It's not the hard part at all. If I were to say, and you would probably ask me this, Scott, well, what?

Listen, give me a list and tell me. Well, it's like step nine. Honestly, there's so much more before it. It really is. And before I could even think about my dreams, before you can even think about your dreams, you have to kind of face it, right?

What do you have to face? So you have to face the laundry to begin with. My wife and I were laughing about this the other day. That basket in my house, it's been there since like three houses now.

This little laundry basket, it should be in the Smithsonian. It's like that old. I have no idea where we bought it. But it's the laundry baskets. It's in the house.

It's sitting there. It just never changes, right? Or maybe a lunchbox, like a kid's lunchbox. You know, you have a lunchbox. They have these little things in it, the little Tupperware dealies on the inside.

You ever open one up after your kid has it for a while? I have my grandkids. They do it. They bring it over. I open it up. There's something in this darn lunchbox.

Technically, they say it was food. I don't know what it is. I have no idea what's in there. You got to face that too. Stuff, right? You got to face the emails.

Like, you probably have family members. I have a family member who writes me an email. It says, hey, no period, no dot, dot, dot, nothing, no context, nothing. Hey, and it came like six weeks ago, and every single day I see it, and I go, not today.

I'm not going to do it. I'm a strong man. I don't have to. Today is for my dreams. I'm just going to go right past it. I and everybody else, you have to face your finances, don't you?

I'm going to be honest with you. I mean, I had a system for my finances back then. It worked really well. Don't look at it. It was fantastic. Yeah, it works for a while, doesn't it?

That was the whole system. Don't look at it. The system was avoidance and the system was working in a sense. I mean, nothing exploded. It worked out okay.

Turns out if you want to fund a dream, you kind of have to open the envelope, right? And say, okay, let's check out these finances here. I had to face my health. I've always been really healthy.

My mom is 94, almost. She's 94, 95. I forget. She's old. That's kind of like my health. It's like, well, she's 94. I'm going to be that too. Genetically, I'm covered, right?

Really? In some senses, that's the feeling I had. Relationships, not the easy ones, the hard ones. The ones you get kind of nodding, right? You have nodding relationships.

Yeah, it's fine. I'm good. How's you doing, man? I'm good. We're good. We're awesome. The marriage, friendships, family, all that stuff. Hmm. You got one of those nods running?

Bet you do. Personally, I had to face some clothing as well. I had a closet. I still do. I'm really bad at this. I have like three different waist sizes.

I do. Because I've always been kind of a fat guy living in a really thin and in-shape guy's body, but I'm always going to keep a couple of extra. Of course, my excuse is I ride the motorcycle, so I have to have a little extra, a little skosh more room, as I say, to be comfortable on the bike, right?

My wife says you don't need five inches. She's right. I've been through different careers, different phases. We all have a phase, right? The phase is still hanging out in my closet.

It is. My wife has a phase, too. There are tags on it in there. It's awesome. I had to face food, that fridge. There are things in the refrigerator I don't even know what they are.

No idea. I look up, should I eat that? Is that good for me? It's weird. It's weird territory. I had to face friendships too. I had some friendships I haven't followed up on for a while.

Today as well as then. It just happens. Figured you were busy. They thought I was busy. It just happens. And yeah, I had to face my dreams. But the dreams underneath the dream.

That's the one we talk about in coaching all the time. That's the one I'm talking about on these programs all the time. I'm talking about the little one, the one that's kind of down underneath.

The ones you struggle with, the little ones. The I'd love to learn the guitar. I'd love to write a kid's book. The ones you keep stuffed in drawers someplace and you never get back to, right?

I got to tell you, a lot of us have those actual dreams and we have big dreams and I had the one my mentor double dared me to go after, I guess. Honestly, after all this stuff, and maybe you felt this before, I actually had a coaching call this morning, kind of spurred this whole podcast.

I started writing notes really fast and couldn't stop myself. It's exhausting. I run into it all the time. People know what they're doing. They got their life totally together, and yet they're lost and they're kind of meandering.

It's exhausting. Most people are weeks, months, years into facing things, and they haven't touched their dream yet. And along the way, I've thought about this a lot. I've had a lot of mentors, but this particular one, he wasn't daring me to chase the dream.

He's kind of daring me to clear the runway. This is why you'll say all the time, it's about the friction to me. It's about removing less is on the other side of more.

The dream isn't buried under fear. The dream isn't buried under doubt. The dream is buried under the laundry, the lunchbox, and the email, and the nods, and the fridge, and

The systems that are working but not working. The closet full of all these three different versions of you. But taking a space. The dream you have, it's been waiting the entire time.

It's been sitting there. It's like, I'm waiting. What are you going to get on at? You don't have a dream problem. You have, what's today? It's today, Wednesday?

You have a Tuesday problem. A Wednesday problem. You have a Wednesday problem. The dream's fine. You have a Wednesday problem. Yeah. We'll let that one breathe a second, okay?

So I think, like me with my mentor, and the next time you sit down and go, why am I not chasing the thing? Why am I not doing the thing? What's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with you.

Basically, you're standing in front of all the stuff, the laundry basket, things like that, right? You're standing there. And somewhere in the back, like a nice kid standing in line that's not making a word for the first time in its life, is the dream. It's just going, I'm right here.

Hey, come on. I've been waiting. You can take care of that stuff so we can go have some fun. That's it. That's the dare. You don't have to chase it. You just have to clear a line of sight.

Open the envelope, answer the email, throw that thing out in the fridge, have a conversation. Hang up a face, whatever it is. And then the runway is clear. Then you take off.

How about you? You got something you got to clear that runway, get off that runway so you can take off. Whatever it is, start there and start today. And I'll be back tomorrow.